All hail the baked potato – it’s inexpensive, a winter warmer, and can make a sumptuously satisfying supper, says Diana Henry

Despite being Irish I didn’t have a baked potato until my late teens. I was in Vancouver, where steak with a baked potato was regular fare. I’d never seen a potato cut open and its fluffy insides filled with butter, sour cream, the nippiest grated cheddar, nuggets of bacon and chopped spring onions. I didn’t care about the steak, the baked potato was a complete dish to me, encompassing the subtle and the sharp, the hot and the cold. I started to make them back at home, using tangy yoghurt instead of sour cream.

At university, baked spuds weren’t just food, they provided warmth and grounded me. In the middle of the night – under pressure to get an essay done for a 9am tutorial – the glow of the baked potato van on the high street calmed me. I clutched the warm Styrofoam box, using it like a hot water bottle, until I got back to my desk.

The fillings on offer in the 1980s weren’t flash. There was coleslaw, baked beans or tuna mayo with cheddar, chilli con carne if you wanted to splash out. When the van wasn’t around, there was Spudulike, a little gaudy and plastic but it did the job. Spudulike opened in 1974 in Glasgow and became part of the British high street until it folded in 2019 (and was later acquired by Albert Bartlett). It was seen at the time as another casualty, along with BHS and Laura Ashley, of high rents and sluggish business. But did we fall out of love with baked potatoes? They were competing with other dishes that seemed more exciting – bowls of ramen, chicken piri piri, sourdough rolls stuffed with tender pork and glossy barbecue sauce.

I’m sad they fell out of favour. They’re inexpensive and perfect for one. I still make myself a baked potato with nothing fancier than butter and grated cheddar. I like the purity of this, but you can let rip if you want to, and I do. With baked sweet potatoes, you have another background, one that contrasts brilliantly with salty ingredients like feta, goat’s cheese and olives.

If you have your own way of baking potatoes, stick to it, but I make mine as per the advice below. I use Maris Pipers but King Edwards are fine, too. I don’t wrap them in foil, and I don’t oil them. You can cook them on a baking sheet but that results in black patches where potato skin and metal meet. Otherwise, just put them on the bars of the oven.

There’s the ‘loaded’ baked potato and the twice-baked potato. Loaded ones are slit down the middle and the fillings are spooned inside. Many years ago, Nigel Slater suggested that you karate chop your potato. I listen to Nigel, but I was terrified of this. I had a meat cleaver that I thought would take on a life of its own and slice off the tips of my fingers.

I just use a sharp knife and slice the potato from end to end. You can see the striations in the flesh. It’s a good idea to slightly fork the soft insides, adding butter and seasoning before anything else. That way you don’t hit unseasoned chunks. For twice-baked ones, I scoop out the insides, mash them with the other ingredients and mound them up in the skins before a blast in the oven.

When I thought about baked potato possibilities for this piece, it was hard to stop. Do you fancy a double-baked potato that’s like a pizza: tomatoes, onion, olives, anchovies, Parmesan and mozzarella mashed with the flesh? Or crab, crème fraîche and Gruyère twice-baked ones? Maybe a loaded sweet potato filled with spiced black beans, peppers, sour cream and avocado salsa? Baked spuds aren’t the grim choice of the solo diner, but an inexpensive supper full of possibilities.